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The Ultimate Marketing Playlist to Keep You Motivated This Summer

It's Friday afternoon, and it's summertime. Hopefully you'll be doing something in the sun this weekend, like sipping a fruity drink on the beach with the breeze blowing through your hair, your skin glowing, and sand between your toes.

Or maybe you're stuck putting the finishing touches on that marketing campaign you're launching on Monday. No matter where you'll be or what you'll be doing this weekend, we've got the marketing-themed summer playlist just for you. Listen to it whether you're lounging around or to motivate you if marketing has to be on your brain -- in the car, at the office, or on the beach!

10 Tunes for the Summertime Marketer

1) "Any Way You Want It" by Journey (For Email Marketing)

"Any way you want it, that's the way you need it, any way you want it." Embrace your inner 80s rock star and sing along as you're creating emails for your marketing campaigns, just the way your contacts want it. In email marketing, list segmentation and personalization matters. After all, no one wants their time wasted by emails that aren't relevant to them. In fact, in his Science of Email Marketing survey research, HubSpot's Dan Zarrella found that, when asked why they chose to subscribe to emails from some companies, one of the most common responses he received was that they expected the emails were going to be relevant to their interests. Slice and dice your list so you can better cater the content you send to targeted groups of people. Use dynamic tags to personalize your email to those recipients. Create emails just the way your prospects want it so you can increase those open and click-through rates!

2) "All or Nothing" by O-Town (For Landing Page Form Creation)

"Cuz I want it all ... or nothing at all." Sounds a bit applicable to landing page form completion -- and anxiety -- doesn't it? As you're creating landing page forms, remember that your page visitors must be willing to complete all the fields, providing their personal and contact information. This means you must be touting an offer they deem valuable enough to give up that information. It also means that if you scare them away with a 20-field long form, they might give you nothing ... at all. But hey, depending on your leads goals (volume vs. quality), you might want to weed out some of those people. Marketers are constantly grappling with this trade-off. You don't want your forms to be so long that people are too overwhelmed and unwilling to complete it, but at the same time, you need to capture the necessary relevant information you need to qualify your leads. When trying to decide how many fields to add to your forms, the simplest advice is to include only the fields necessary to properly qualify your leads.

3) "The Motivation Proclamation" by Good Charlotte (For Call-to-Action Optimization)

"Motivate me, I wanna get myself out of this bed, captivate me, I want good thoughts inside my head." Hopefully, rocking out to this pop punk band will motivate you to create more compelling calls-to-action that captivate your visitors and get them to click and convert. Design visually eye-catching buttons that stand out from the rest of the content on your web page, and craft compelling copy that clearly demonstrates the value of the offer you're promoting. Furthermore, use A/B testing to optimize the placement of your various calls-to-action to target the right CTAs at the right time to the right website visitors. Motivate and captivate your visitors with beautiful CTAs! This free ebook features 101 effective CTA examples to get you going.

4) "Instant Pleasure" by Rufus Wainwright (For PPC)

"'Cause all I ask for is instant pleasure, instant pleasure, instant pleasure." Feeling spunky today as you're looking forward to a weekend of basking on the beach in your sexy bikini or hunky swim trunks? If you need to fit in some marketing first, get some instant lead-gen gratification by leaning on some PPC budget to generate more leads in these difficult, summer lead-gen months. Complement your organic search strategy and maximize your inbound marketing strategy with a paid search campaign. Just set up your budget and master Google AdWords at the same time as you're working on getting your sun-kissed look.

5) "Lonely No More" by Rob Thomas (For Social Media)

"I don't wanna be lonely no more, I don't wanna have to pay for this." Good news! You don't have to pay to grow your social media reach. Don't be lonely no more -- create and share remarkable, engaging content, and grow your brand awareness in social media. And the great part of no longer being lonely in social media is that you can use your reach to generate new leads and customers, too. The more the merrier, whether you're referring to the number of friends sitting on your deck sipping margaritas, or the size of your social media following.

"Oh I heard it through the grapevine, Oh I'm just about to lose my mind. Honey, honey yeah." Just how are people finding your website? Are they hearing about it through the grapevine from referring websites, or is your website the first search result when people search for a relevant keyword? Remember: the first step to generating leads is driving traffic to your website. As you're perfecting your keyword strategy, building and tracking your inbound links, and optimizing your on-page SEO, enjoy this classic Motown favorite!

7) "Pictures of You" by The Cure (For Visual Content Creation)

"I've been looking so long at these pictures of you that I almost believe they're real." We've all heard the saying, 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' And these days, with social networks becoming increasingly more visual (hint: Pinterest) and visually-oriented content like memes and infographics spreading like crazy, savvy marketers are investing time and resources into visual content creation. Are you? Use visual content to clearly depict concepts that are difficult to convey with text, give your brand a strong identity and personality, and drive more engagement that you can ultimately convert into leads. And why not crank out that visual content while listening to "Pictures of You"?

8) "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen (for Lead Scoring)

"Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me maybe." According to MarketingSherpa's B2B Benchmarking Report, only 21% of B2B marketers actually have an established lead scoring system. Does your sales team have so many leads on their hands that they would benefit from an established lead prioritization and grading system? Would they be more effective if they were passed only the best, most qualified leads instead of people who are just casually perusing your site? Implement a lead scoring system to help Sales prioritize leads and determine which leads they should actually follow up with. Then call them maybe.

9) "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey (For Lead Nurturing)

"Don't stop believin', hold on to that feelin.'" Journey is just so good, they made it on our list twice! This classic 80s rock song, which has been made popular again through Glee, is a feel-good, uplifting summer anthem. Don't give up on those leads who might not yet be ready to buy from you -- keep nurturing them with a series of customized emails! Believe in them. While that lead may have a low lead score today, over time and through carefully crafting lead nurturing campaigns, they may actually become more sales ready. And if you're really feeling that 80s rock vibe, register for the INBOUND 2012 conference. You'll learn some killer inbound marketing tips, and catch a live performance from Cyndi Lauper!

10) "Wake Up Call" by Maroon 5 (For Cold Calling)

"Wake up call, caught you in the morning with another one in my bed." Can you say cold calling? Being disruptive and calling people who don't want to hear from you is so outbound marketing. Instead, embrace permission-based marketing -- inbound marketing -- and drop your reliance on bothering your prospects with annoying cold calls. And if you're going to do it, at least be honest when you're on the phone. Sing your heart out to the person you're calling, Maroon 5 style: "Cold call, guess what, I'm interrupting your morning once again."

So go ahead -- crank up the volume on this playlist, and rock out to the best summer marketing tunes ever, whether you're optimizing those landing pages or nurturing your leads!

What other songs do you think should be on this ultimate summer marketing playlist?